I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

Yeah, I think that Massachusetts Senate hopeful Ed Markey’s (D, MA-05) going to have more problems in his primary than he thought that he was going to have in his primary.

Representative Edward J. Markey refused to back down Thursday from comments he made this week that seemed to compare the US Supreme Court’s ruling on campaign finance law to the high court’s 19th-century Dred Scott decision, a notorious pro-slavery ruling.

Because let’s see who the Boston Globe quoted in response. Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III of the Ella J. Baker House and Boston TenPoint Coalition called this a “somewhat revisionist approach to the Dred Scott case” (Translation: What the heck, Markey?). Reverend Talbert W. Swan II of the Springfield NAACP tried to polish the excrement a little, but concluded “I don’t think campaign ­finance can be compared to the subjugation of an entire people” (translation: What the heck, Markey?). The Reverend William E. Dickerson II of Dorchester’s Greater Love Tabernacle noted that “We minimize the issue of the Dred Scott decision when we try to juxtapose it [with lesser issues]” (translation: What the he… oh, you get the point). And, of course, there was Stephen Lynch (Markey’s major opponent in the Democratic primary), who took time out from laughing at Markey’s gaffe to solemnly assure the world that while of course he feels that Citizens United should be overturned via a Constitutional amendment* (while still taking that dirty, dirty corporate campaign money, of course) he doesn’t think that it was anything as bad as the Dred Scott decision. (more…)

More like blue-on-blue than red-on-red (it is one of the great ironies of American politics that these days the Right is designated as red while the Left has blue, to both side’s secret annoyance. Or not-so-secret annoyance) – still, Weasel Zippers (H/T: …somebody) is correct: watching Establishment Democrats try to get their base under control is pretty funny.

Let me give you the gist of the article: Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, still smarting over the way that the dirty, smelly union hippies (I paraphrase) dared to challenge him in the last election primary, came out to tell progressives that their refusal to rubber-stamp incumbent Democrats cost the party eight seats, so shut up. This did not, as they say, go over well: particularly funny was watching DCCC chair (read: “designated scapegoat for 2012″) Steve Israel practice the arcane art of sounding confident and declarative while at the same time saying nothing at all, but the progressives made up for that lack of semantic content with… an entirely different lack of semantic content. (more…)